This article describes how to handle various situations in which students leave your school: graduations, withdrawals, discipline cases, and leaves of absence. After recording the exit, you may also want to consider whether to remove the student's user access.

The student role: make inactive or delete?

When someone with the Student role is no longer a student at your school, you have the option to set her student role to inactive or remove it altogether. While both are possible, 99.9999999879% of the time, you'll want to set the role to inactive rather than remove it. Some notes on this:

• Approximately 0.0000000121% of the time, you may want to remove the Student role because you either like to be annoyed or like to annoy others. Some examples of annoyances include not being able to export transcripts and not allowing the student to request a transcript.
• Setting the Student role to inactive prevents you from recording new academic information about the person while also making her existing academic information easy to access and export.
• Most of the student exit methods described below have an option to automatically deactivate the student role. If you're doing things manually, it makes no difference which option you choose provided the student's academic information is tied to an academic program.
• Whatever you do, don't delete the student's profile! Inactive student records don't cost your school anything, and it'll just make everyone's life harder if you delete them.

Granting a degree

To graduate a student, you simply grant their degree. After checking her Degree Audit to see whether she has fulfilled your degree requirements...

1. Click next to the degree you wish to grant and choose Edit Degree.
2. Change the degree's status to granted.
3. Enter the granted date.
4. Check whether to make the student role inactive. Doing so will prevent further modification to her academic information, but will not affect her user status or other items in Populi (financial, library, etc.).
5. If she has a specialization connected to the degree, you can enter a completed date.
6. Finally, click Save.

Once you save...

• The student is now an alumni and gets the corresponding system tag.
• The program connected with the degree becomes inactive (unless the student is still pursuing a degree in that program).
  • The student's graduation date appears under that program as the Exit Date; the Exit Reason displays as graduated.
• The student role becomes inactive (if you checked to do so).
• The student's status is updated in various reports and statistics throughout Populi.

Withdrawals

To withdraw a student, you simply set their Student role to inactive. (This is different than withdrawing a student from a single course—that is done by changing her enrollment status on the Course Roster.)

1. Click edit roles under the student's profile picture.
2. Uncheck the box next to Student. Some new fields will appear...
3. Enter the exit date.
4. Select an exit reason. These are the official IPEDS exit reasons (you can also add custom exit reasons in Academics > Settings > Exit Reasons). If you don't see the exact reason you'd like to add, select Unknown or Other. If the student is withdrawing for disciplinary reasons, see "Discipline cases", below.
5. Finally, click Save.

Once you save...

• The student is withdrawn from all of her unfinalized courses.
• The student's programs and degrees become inactive.
  • The exit date and exit reason under the program(s) are updated with your selections.
• The student's status is updated in various reports and statistics throughout Populi.

Program withdrawals

If a student withdraws from a particular program, you can note that by editing the program details on her profile.

1. Click next to the program you wish to change and choose Edit Program.
2. Set the program status to Inactive.
3. Select an exit reason.
4. Edit any other pertinent fields.
5. Click Save when you're done.

Now that the student is withdrawn from the program:

• Any degrees in that program will be set to Inactive.
• The student's status is updated in various reports and statistics throughout Populi.

Discipline cases

If the student is leaving because of a disciplinary action, you can include a discipline record(in addition to withdrawing the student).

• In the right column of the student's profile, click add a disciplinary action.
• Select the action.
• Enter a start date. Check if there's an end date and enter that ( Expulsion prompts you for a readmitted date).
• You can also add comments and attach files.
• Click Add.

After adding the discipline record, you may also need to withdraw the student from courses (see above).

Leaves of absence

When a student takes a leave of absence (LOA), she is temporarily pausing her studies with the intent to resume them within a certain timeframe. To properly record LOA and ensure it is included in the appropriate reports, use the built-in student information field.

1. In the right column, click edit next to Student Information.
2. Check the box next to Leave of Absence.
3. Enter the starting and anticipated return dates.
4. Click Save.

Now that you've put the student on leave of absence:

• To end a leave of absence, just un-check the box next to Leave of Absence.
• She'll have the Leave of Absence system tag.
• You can retrieve the student from the Data Slicer by searching for LOA Anticipated Return Date, Days Since LOA Start Date, and LOA Start Date.
• She'll be marked as LOA on the Clearinghouse report.
• Her Student role will remain active. If you set her Student role to inactive, that exit date/reason data will over-ride the LOA information. So, don't deactivate the Student role!
• If the LOA lasts longer than 180 days, certain financial aid regulations sometimes require that the student be listed as Withdrawn. Check the rules for any private, State, or Federal financial aid to see whether you should take any additional action.
• Registrars will be notified by email when students are LOA for 60, 120, and 170 days.